


The dead keep the dead (the dead are liars)

by LorienofLoth



Category: Black Jewels - Anne Bishop
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 09:54:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28469364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LorienofLoth/pseuds/LorienofLoth
Summary: Prothvar knows what it means to be demon-dead. He is not a fool. His bloodline no longer has any meaning to him. (Prothvar is a liar.)
Relationships: prothvar yaslana & mephis sadiablo
Kudos: 4





	The dead keep the dead (the dead are liars)

Prothvar watches his daughters. He was raised in the shadow of Hell, and the Hall, and the Keep itself, he knows the Rules. The dead keep to the dead. He doesn’t talk to them, doesn’t introduce himself to their husbands or hold their children. He doesn’t respond to their screams of rage, or their howls of fury. Prothvar was born in Ebon Askavi; he knows what it means to be demon-dead.

Prothvar knows what it means to be demon-dead. When Prothvar was a child, old enough to be handed blunted sticks to practice with, but not old enough to be expected to shield against real blades, his mother’s lungs failed. It took nearly six weeks for Arian to die; coughing up blood and leaving bloody smears across everything she touched. Arian didn’t care.

Arian took centuries to fade into the darkness. She slept the days away in a windowless room built by his grandfather in their Eyrie and emerged every evening to talk and laugh and weave. She wove tangled webs and left blood as red as the Jewels around her neck clinging to them; she told awful jokes and left her son stone-faced. She did not ever speak to the High Lord of Hell. She told her son stories. She gave advice. One day, she said, our line will produce greatness. One day, she said, but until then they will diminish. They will fall and fail until you will think we ought to have died. Prothvar, my son, dead Arian told him, you will have two brothers, each half by blood, and you will fail them both.

Prothvar knows what it means to be demon-dead, and he knows what it means to fail. His mother and grandfather are demon-dead; his father isn’t even a word on a breeze, or an idea in a storybook.

Prothvar watches his daughters. Tarian is a Green-Jewelled Black Widow; Andian is Sapphire-Jewelled Healer. Tarian marries. Her husband is kind and generous and funny, everything Prothvar would have chosen in a son-in-law. Prothvar watches him. They never meet. Andian never marries. She lives with an Eyrien Black Widow, Kassian, and they ward their home slowly in a net of tangled webs and shields until very few could even get close. Prothvar can’t. He thinks sometimes that Kassian can feel his presence in a web somewhere, but he knows the Rules. The dead keep to the dead. He still watches them; still guards their door. Neither is a soldier, but both are known in this war. He gifts Maria, the Harpy Queen, much flesh for her and her hellhounds. Men who trouble his daughters are forfeit, always.

Prothvar is dead and he knows how to be dead. His family has died about him, his grandfather and his friends and his almost cousins. One dead and one dead and gone. Prothvar searches the battlefields for his almost-cousin’s remains; they were as close as brothers, after all. Prothvar searches and searches, but he cannot find his almost brother. Nor can the High Lord of Hell. In the end they all stop searching. Prothvar thinks of his grandmother, his almost-cousin’s mother, and knows he has failed.

Prothvar is dead, but he is not alone. He flies with his grandfather and patrols with his troop, and he drinks with his other almost-cousin. There is a dead body between them, but Prothvar remembers his mother’s words, and watches his kinsman.

Tarian has children, and they travel through the Gates out of his sight. Andian doesn’t have children at all. Her nieces and nephews attend her funeral. Prothvar doesn’t. He knows what it means to be demon-dead. Andian doesn’t. Her body rots in the ground.

Prothvar knows what it is to be demon-dead, and he has never seen his grandchildren’s grandchildren. They live through a Gate into a realm less friendly to his kind. He doesn’t know if they have his daughters’ noses or eyes or cheekbones. He and his almost-cousin practice sparring and avoid mirrors. His almost cousin doesn’t ask about his kin; he doesn’t ask his almost-cousin about his. They both know the Rules which apply to the dead.

Prothvar and his almost-cousin play long games of chess.

Prothvar couldn’t name his grandchildren’s grandchildren’s children.

Prothvar is dead, and he does not listen for tales of his kin. Eyriens die in force, and they arrive in Hell. Prothvar invites them to fly. They do not tell him tales of Eyriens still alive, with the name of the Demon Prince, and the power to back their arrogance. Prothvar hears no tales of the living. He knows the tales of the dead, and they are enough to keep him company through his grandfather’s long vigil. Through his long penance.

It is Prothvar’s almost-cousin who tells him of the girl. Prothvar is dead, he does not care about girls who walk among the cildru dyathe and leave blood in their footprints.

Prothvar is dead. His brothers are dead and his line has failed. He does not mean to visit the girl.

He teaches her how to fight.

There is a boy who bears his name, who flies the Khaldharon Run and ends up with salt-shredded wings and little hope of survival. Prothvar teaches the boy what he can, although the boy’s skill is greater than he would have believed possible for one so young. For one so young and beaten and inexperienced.

Prothvar knows what it means to be demon-dead. His Queen requests of him a service—a last service—and he does not watch his daughter’s great-great-great-grandson. The demon-dead are not the living and should not try to be. Prothvar has a dead mother and a missing father, a dead grandfather, two dead daughters, an almost-cousin who they can only pray has faded into the Darkness, and another who still lingers.

His mother told him he would fail two of his kinsmen. He knows she was extraordinarily kind when she read that tanged web. Nonetheless, no matter how kind the reading, Prothvar has failed all of his blood, even his daughter’s great-great-great-grandson’s mother. He cannot fail any more.

He does not.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I was envisaging Arian as Andulvar's daughter, then I remembered that I previously wrote him as having a son, but I couldn't remember if that was canon or not and I couldn't be arsed to check, so up to you I guess. Either daughter or hideously awkward in law relationship.  
> Also I feel like this is thematically linked to 10 reasons, but not sure if it actually aligns.


End file.
